Strangers
by casfics
Summary: After time has widened the rift, what remains of what was once beautiful? Is it possible to save everything?


_**{due creds to Ed Sheeran, Elle Farmand and Rupi Kaur, whose works I have incorporated and adapted}**_

 _ **deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation - similar to "Coffees to Fix" for panic-at-casualty**_

-x-

 _Take my hand and my_

 _Heart and soul, I will_

 _Only have these eyes for you_

 _And you know, everything changes but_

 _We'll be strangers if we see this through_

 _You could stay within these walls and bleed_

 _Or just stay with me_

 _Oh lord, now_

 _All my senses come to life_

 _While I'm stumbling home as drunk as I_

 _Have ever been and I'll never leave again_

 _'Cause you are the only one_

 _And all my friends have gone to find_

 _Another place to let their hearts collide_

 _Just promise me, you'll always be a friend_

 _'Cause you are the only one_

 _I'm stumbling off drunk, getting myself lost_

 _I am so gone, so tell me the way home_

 _I listen to sad songs, singing about love_

 _And where it goes wrong_

 _All my senses come to life_

 _While I'm stumbling home as drunk as I_

 _Have ever been and I'll never leave again_

 _'Cause you are the only one_

 _And all my friends have gone to find_

 _Another place to let their hearts collide_

 _Just promise me, you'll always be a friend_

 _'Cause you are the only one_

-x-

There is something oddly comforting about sleeping next to a stranger. It is perhaps because their body isn't really yours, not anymore, but open to be explored, touched, kissed, caressed. You trust them in that moment. You are sleeping next to each other, sharing a space, a smell, a hunger for something deep, a connection that gives you a break from loneliness. The space isn't significant—a bedroom, a couch in the living room, a hotel room. And the words exchanged aren't much, but soft affirmations of what feels good, and what doesn't, of what you want, and what they need. It's an exchange of whispers in the light, in the dark, under a blanket or above. Sometimes you don't hear each other anymore, but you listen with your body, and the silence is comforting.

Their arm is wrapped around my neck, heavy, but comforting. They are my stranger and always have been —I wake up to their smell: a mixture of the leftover product that melds into my hair and skin, concentrated alcohol, foggy fatigue from two broken hours of sleep. I remember last night, how they fumbled with my buttons and let out a drunken chuckle as the material ripped. And how I pressed a finger to their lips to mask the noise, but things just escalated from there, and—

I then feel the vibration from the train moving over the bridge across the street, and the rattling reminds me that I must get up.

I imagine them making me coffee, but I am not here to stay. Not now. My reality is made up of moving objects, of limited time signifiers, of errands and schedules and responsibilities and mistakes. I untangle myself from my stranger's arm, and they inadvertently pulls me back into their chest. I push myself forward despite this. I am free. This time, my stranger turns their body away from me—like they have understood our tentative connection is over.

My feet touch the cold, uncarpeted floor lightly as I make my way out to the dark hallway, past the closed door of other strangers, and out the front door. Outside, everyone is moving, the mother with the stroller, the man arranging fruits outside his shop, the boy with the bike, the girl running for the train. Everyone is moving. But I would like to be still, to think about these moments with strangers and why they are curing and hurtful at the same time. Hurtful in that they inevitably end in their transience. Hurtful in that you can't have expectations or feelings of need. Hurtful in that you face the world alone once you leave your stranger's bed. You can't expect to be remembered. You can't expect to be defined, even if you ponder, just for a moment, the idea of being anything other than strangers once more. Not when distance has ravaged everything. Arms length is the only way. And you have to be thankful for what they have given you.

I walk toward the staircase that leads to the train, and my stranger's face slowly disappears from my subconscious.

Our paths will cross again.

Suddenly I'm taken aback, knocked, bereft and gasping for air. The train pulls into the station and waits, engine juddering. But I cannot board.

My legs betray me, carrying me back to the hotel, through the reception whilst bewildered onlookers stare, up the nineteen steps and round the corner. The door is ajar from where I left it the last time. Almost instantly my throat squeezes and clenches, denying me the right to breathe, furious that I left them in such a vulnerable position, though really I left the door purposefully, cruelly, to make it easier for me should I wish to enter again. And here I am.

To my relief, their chest still heaves up and down, rhythmically and reassuringly. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale: a pattern of mortality. A delicate coincidence that they exist here and the moment was there to be shared.

A Post-It note hangs from near the cheap blue kettle. I snatch it and wildly fumble in my satchel for a pen, for anything to ink the words out. It is after mid-morning and I am going to be late. They are going to be late.

My chest feels swollen, everything feels sore, inches beneath the purple-tinged marks. I steal a final glance at my stranger; their sleeping face distorted by my brimming eyes.

Suddenly the pen is hovering in my hands, an inch above the paper. All my capacity has been stripped from me in a matter of seconds. They mumble something unconsciously and tumble over, curling back up under the duvet like a turtle retreating into its shell.

Wild with panic, I scribble:

 _Sometimes_

 _I stop myself from_

 _saying the words out loud_

 _as if leaving my mouth too often_

 _might wear them down_

 _\- I love you_

Quickly I shift my hand, flick the television on, turn the remote down so the volume is the lowest setting. I hear the hum and hubbub of the 9 o'clock news. A train crash in the next town.

I glance out the window but my eyes are dry.


End file.
